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Leaks have been plaguing Nintendo over the past few weeks, with a number of chats on forums like 4Chan seeing a wealth of ROMs from the Game Boy and 3DS era appearing. The data is all being pulled from servers, with the latest, biggest drop centered on Wii. The entire source code, documentation, and design files for the console are now out in the wild.
What’s more, a range of Nintendo 64 demos have also been obtained and disseminated. You can watch the one for a slide puzzle, below:
The N64 demos are especially fascinating. Prior to the launch of that system, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi infamously pulled all but two of 12 demos the day before Space World ’95, which was the company’s Japan-only gaming convention. One can’t help but wonder if any of these demos were among the ones pulled, or if these are instead from the Chinese market iQue N64 console. Regardless, it’s immensely interesting no matter where the demos were used.
So, whose servers are being mined? The leak itself appears to be from the servers of a company called BroadOn. BroadOn helped develop hardware and software for Nintendo during the Wii era, thus why this information was under the company’s care. The damage that the leak can or can’t cause is debatable, but it has been noted that the information goes very deep into the nuts and bolts of how Wii was created. What more enterprising minds might do with this data is anyone’s guess. If nothing else, it’s a rare glimpse into how Nintendo goes about creating its products that video game historians will be pouring over for some time to come.
Source: ResetEra
